Harmony Korine Quotes

I've been doing magic since I was five years old, and when I was trying to get acting gigs, I found I could make a good living at it. It's great to kind of shake the cobwebs off and get the feeling of a live audience again. I love close-up magic, the card stuff, the coin stuff, the really up-close David Blaine stuff.

I am a street performer as much as I am a stage performer. Yes, I have a television show, but every trick, every 'Mindfreak' you see, I can do live.

Literally, my last call was with David Blaine, congratulating him on his show. I have a camaraderie with David.

I do all my own stunts and come away with bruises and scratches.

You can watch actors create their illusions, but if you don't see where they get the pigeons from, you don't really know how they're doing it.

I started performing when I was 9 or 10, doing magic.

I always do my own stunts, as much as possible. I'm a little stubborn about it.

Anytime somebody climbs up those steps into the ring, they have a heart.

Far too often English players seem determined to keep running after getting a whack on the leg, even though the chance to get a shot in has gone.

I was damn lucky to choose this profession. I had no idea when I started out that I was really an illusionist and a magician.

I've done stunts when I was hurting so bad I couldn't hardly breathe and yet I would go ahead and do it.

I'm the type of fighter who has never made an excuse. I fought with a broken rib, broken leg.

Before he died, Harry said that his wife knew everything about every trick that he did, and that she knew how they all worked. It was interesting to play with that idea, and to find the places where she really was afraid for his safety and where she was playing along. I had to find that line between what's a performance and what's real, and that's so much of what magic is, as well. It was really, really fun. They were really partners, in every sense of the word.

In training, you listen to your body. In competition, you tell your body to shut up.

I could vanish the silk better than Ben Vereen - that was for sure. So I think maybe they said, "Okay, maybe he has something to offer." Years pass and I get a bit of a career, and Ben Vereen ends up hosting one of my specials where I walked through the Great Wall of China. Things came full circle in kind of an ironic way, when you have that honor of people that have influenced you so much host your show. It's a huge experience in your life.

I'll no longer say that I have supernatural powers. I am an entertainer. I want to do a good show. My entire character has changed.

Pain is a coward. He flees when faced by the irresistible power of the will-to-live, which is more strongly rooted in the flesh than the intensest passion is rooted in the spirit.

I've worked ever since I was a kid with a two-bit kit of magic tricks trying to improve my skills at entertaining whatever public I had - and to make myself ready, whenever the breaks came, to entertain a wider and more demanding public.

I would just like to mention Robert Houdin who in the eighteenth century invented the vanishing birdcage trick and the theater matinee - may he rot and perish. Good afternoon.

You do bits and you fake anger and you write a bit and you have passion for it. Then you do it too many times and you have to work up the anger... and I've never had to do that with Dr. Drew Pintsky. Dr. Drew is to medicine what David Blaine is to science.

Weakness has its hidden resources, as well as strength. There is a degree of folly and meanness which we cannot calculate upon, and by which we are as much liable to be foiled as by the greatest ability or courage.

Acting takes a degree of mutual trust and respect.

Maybe that’s why I’ve made it as far as I have – 2,521 miles. If I ran to a doctor every time I got a little cyst or abrasion I’d still be in Nova Scotia. Or else I’d never have started. I’ve seen people in so much pain. The little bit of pain I’m going through is nothing. They can’t shut it off, and I can’t shut down every time I feel a little sore.

In order to dominate the soul you must also learn to dominate the body. And in order to dominate the body you cannot fear pain.

On one of my birthdays I did 1,000 chin-ups and 1,000 push-ups. For my 70th birthday I towed 70 boats with 70 people in it, my feet and hands tied-my hands were in handcuffs, my feet were tied together-and I towed these boats a mile-and-a-half in Long Beach Harbor. For my 93rd birthday I'm going to tow my wife across the bathtub.